In the midst of a world where spiritual
idealism is all but extinct and feminine mediocrity and
worldliness dominates our every thought and action, Genius News strives to re-ignite the noble in Man; to
reinvent the philosophic wheel and recapture what has always been
best in the human character: Reason. Our goal with this
publication is to reach out to those rare souls who have been
blessed by Nature with sufficient consciousness to suffer for the
nature of the world and for their own ignorance. We hope to
inspire them into ever greater levels of idealism with
challenging and provocative material suitable only for those with
the loftiest of philosophic aspirations. Our aim is to encourage
such ones to embrace the Infinite and walk the dangerous but
rewarding path to Enlightenment - the path of the true individual.

The -[- symbol will return you to this contents
table from each major section.

From Genius Forum

Although
Xmas represents a tiny part of each year, it is a festival
anticipated for literally
months ahead of time. Such is the depth of desire we humans have
to escape reality and wallow in insipid forms of decadence. It is
virtually impossible, unless one discards reason and decency
altogether, to find any virtue in Xmas on any level whatever. The
uglier a thing is the greater effort one must put in to disguise
its unsightliness. No wonder, then, so much is spent on tinsel
and lights and various adornments. If not for that it would be
difficult for people not to focus on the underlying truth of the
nature of this celebration of all things egotistical. In the
following dialogue, some of those underlying aspects of Xmas are
identified:

David
Quinn: Christmas is a jolly old
affair, a bit of harmless fun that brings people together and
spreads some good-will through-out the world. Or is it?

Let's look at the basic principles of Christmas:

(a) It introduces a powerful illusion to children's minds (that
of Santa Claus) which the adults dishonestly pretend is real.

(b) Children are bribed (with presents) into accepting this
deception and, by extension, to value the existence of illusion
in general. It brainwashes children into thinking that falsity is
far more valuable and enjoyable than truth.

(c) The adults invariably conduct themselves with artificial
bonhomie and pretend to be friendly with people whom they dislike
and normally wouldn't have a bar of at any other time. They then
compound this dishonesty by refering to their hypocritical
behaviour as the "spreading of good-will"

(d) The adults try to soothe their conscience over their
participation in the affair by linking the whole thing to Jesus.
They call it Christmas (Christ's Mass) and deludely imagine that
a pure, truth-loving person like Jesus would somehow give this
orgy of emotion, self-deception and hypocrisy his blessing. What
a dream!

Importantly, Christmas allows adults to escape the dreary
routines of their everyday lives. For a few days they are
transported to a magical, fairy-tale kind of world, one that
connects deeply with their own childhood memories of Christmas.
All the frustrations that have been building up over the previous
year are thereby given an outlet.

After a few days of this, even the adults begin to tire of the
artificiality of it all and soon they are yearning to return the
"reality" of their humdrum lives. Suddenly, their
dreary lives look appealing and attractive again. Their batteries
are recharged and now they are ready to devote themselves to
another year of slavery.

Thus, Christmas acts as a sort of linchpin to the preservation of
modern society. Without it, people would quickly find their
slavish lives intolerable and would start to press for
fundamental changes to the way society was run. They would begin
to seriously question their values and beliefs, and even
challenge the core values which humanity has bound itself over
the millenia. But no, Christmas rears its glittering head each
year, just in time to put any thought of revolution to bed.
Everything that is traditional, mediocre and base is reaffirmed
once more. It really is the season of good-will!

One of the most noticable features of Christmas is the way it
dehumazies everyone who participates in it. Almost at the tick of
a clock, people magically turn into robots who mechanically
follow the same rituals at the same time each year. It's as
though some kind of subroutine is activated within them,
whereupon they temporarily lose whatever spark of individuality
they possessed and enter into a zombie-like state in which the
"Christmas spirit" takes over. It's quite a spectacle
to behold. Never do I feel more alienated and repulsed by the
human race than during this time.

So here, then, is the ultimate purpose of Christmas - to
encourage people to be happy with ignorance, non-individuality,
herdliness and mediocrity. It forcefully pushes people at a very
young age into accepting and valuing egotistical fantasy and
encourages them to be repulsed by the merest hint of cold, lofty
truth. It gathers together all the anti-wisdom and anti-Truth
elements in the human psyche and celebrates them in the most
joyous, heart-wrenching way possible. In other words, Christmas
is a force for evil.

Yamori: As far as I've seen it's as simple as giving a very
cheery holiday in order to associate "happy feelings"
in the back of people's minds when they think of christianity and
the current way the yearly sociatal rituals seem to be run...

although ironicly it has evolved into a lot of "anti-christian"
concepts over time- Partying, greed, Indulgance ect.. mmmm
indulgance.

I've always found it sad that we see a large chunk of people
helping out their fellow human beings around Xmas time, only to
revert back to their old crotchety selves soon after. It makes
much more sense to be that "giving" year round or just
not at all.

I tend to agree that it serves as a "saver" of current
society.. A lot of people would truely start getting restless
with the seemingly "death spiral" society we are in
today.

But, on the other hand I still am in touch with my emotions and
do find a lot of aspects of xmas enjoyable, particularly an
excuse to be with my family and have a jolly old time with them.

Zagreus: It is hardly a force for "evil" as you have
described it David, but you are right about the adults and their
adult lies. Christmas is the one time of year allotted to gifts
and giving and celebrations so as to avoid this tiresome practise
the whole year round. It is for boring people who only feel
comfortable giving anything if everybody else is doing the same.
They will have nothing of themselves to give. It is for
conservative well-meaning people who are at home in giving up a
little of their money they work for at an agreed upon time,
people who do not have much love to give but understand just how
far a gesture can be misunderstood to their advantage. The less
meaning christmas has at any one time, the better, and here you
are bathing it in the splendour of such titles as 'evil'! You
really think that which opposes truth and wisdom is great enough
to be evil?! It is as though you haven't lived! David, just how
familiar are you with zombie-like states?!

David Quinn: If Christmas was merely how you describe it here - a
harmless celebration designed for conservative well-meaning
people to express their feelings for one another, I could perhaps
agree with you. But it goes much deeper than that. It introduces
a powerful herdly force into children's minds while they are
still young and vulnerable and cripples their development with
false attachments and values. It's a socially-sanctioned form of
child abuse and therefore evil.

And if "evil" isn't that which opposes truth and
wisdom, then what is it?

Bondi: Well, I do not totally agree with the "summary"
of David's starting opinion but I agree with that viewpoint.

I think Christmas nowadays is a kind of hypocrisy or masquerade:
we want to show how we love and take care each other -- during
one or two days; while we almost completely hate and despise (or
at least do not care about) each other -- through the whole year.

Serpenteen: If Christmas was simply and attempt to experience joy,
that would be fine. What I'm annoyed by is the preconditioned
expectation others put on me. The gifts are pretty worthless and
I don't like visitations that are more draining than fulfilling.
Still this isnt Christmass fault. Its the
people that are ignorant and evil. But they are like this all the
time, and its just events like Christmas that really help
the ignorance shine.

Actually this could be beneficial in exposing idiocy. One thing
Christmas helped me learn is to not believe everything I'm told.
I felt extremely stupid and gullible when I learned Santa wasn't
real...

Life seems to be filled with similar (but less exaggerated)
imaginary plays that we play out. Hopefully we can understand the
true nature of these roles so we can enjoy them efficiently --
and not be mind-numb, robot zombies.

Words alone like "Merry Christmas" or "I love you"
are usually superficial and should be viewed as such ( -- along
with other traditions). It doesn't express much (beyond empty
gratification), but it does indicate an inner desire for
something, which hopefully can be further explored or fulfilled;
and not continually misunderstood.

Sapius: David said: "(a) It introduces a powerful
illusion to children's minds (that of Santa Claus) which the
adults dishonestly pretend is real."

True, but it is not as powerful as you think, take yourself as an
example. Surely one needs to experience "illusions"
before one Realizes, through reasoning and logic, that which is
Real. How would one know what is Real if one is not given the
chance to experience "illusions" first. There is a
systematic sequence of Causes, which cannot be breached, look for
yourself; Nature has it designed that way, since we open our eyes
in illusions. Don't tell me you jumped into Reality without
Experiencing or Understanding what illusions are. So by what
authority do you want to rob others the chance of Realizing it on
their own.

There is a right time for every individual to realize the
falsehood of illusions on his or her own. If you feel
the urge to spread the Truth, and that others should do the same,
then you have not realized any Truth at all.

You are trying to be just another Jesus or a Buddha, only that
You think that you can do a better job.

WolfsonJakk: Christmas in America is a cheap facade of consumerism.
Many children these days have not a clue of the origination of
Christmas, nor of it's much older winter celebration traditions.
Celebrations once mattered when there was still struggle and
uncertainty in life; life and death. Now the only struggle for
most Americans is how to balance their credit cards bills with
their desire to heap undeserved cheap gifts on their children,
and couch it in some sort of pseudo-religious/familial setting.
It is a total sham.

Dan Rowden: The most salient feature of modern Xmas celebrations
for me is the complete juvenality of it all. It is expressive of
the desire to return to the safety of the childish mind. The
emphasis placed on children with respect to Xmas is really quite
astounding, from the celebration of Jesus as a babe, and not the
celebration of his brith, which is a pointer the really important
stuff - namely, the substance if his life - but an actual
wallowing in the infantile.

This emphasis on children, even if taken in theological terms is
absurd since the spiritual profundity of Xianity, even at the
mediocre and mundane level of conventional Xian theology, is
beyond the scope of young children to comprehend. So, what is the
point of it all? Apart from the benefit derived by adults happliy
returning for a time to all things childish, it also, as David
Quinn pointed out, helps inculcate Xianity in the minds of young
children, even if only on the level of immature sentiment.

I mean, just look at the vacuity of Xmax carols and songs! They
have the temper and modulation of kiddie songs and nursery rhyhms
and lullabys. The whole intent seems to be to lull people into a
state of passivity and spiritual somnambulism, a state where
Jesus represents not a symbol of how one ought live one's life,
but of the warm and comforting arms of a mother.

Xmas is a time where people return to infancy and seek to suckle
on the teat of the Christ-mother.

I must confess to being guilty, on occasion, of
causing people considerable agitation as a result of my
proclamation that the world would be a far better place
if there was considerably more hypocrisy. Despite their
concerned bewilderment, I stand by this claim
unswervingly. You see, genuine hypocrisy is something
relatively rare in these times of entrenched pragmatism
and spiritual and intellectual mediocrity. Genuine
hypocrisy is not in itself a virtue, but all things are
relative, and in this world, currently, it comes so close
to holding that status that it may as well carry that
designation if only for the sake of the positive effect
it may impart.

A true hypocrite is one who upholds, or at the very least
has a sense of some higher virtue, but who subsequently
ignores or does not live up to that virtue. The
significant thing here is that such ones at least have
a sense of something higher; they actually recognise the
reality of transcendent virtues, their inability to
consistently live up to those virtues notwithstanding.

But in the world
as it stands, the very notion of higher virtue,
transcendent virtue, or simply living a truly principled
life, is considered tantamount to presumptive arrogance!
To authentically express one's principles is to show
intolerance to others who do not share such principles,
and in an era where relativism is the new theology, that
is unaccetpable. It is horrible but true, that nowadays
we are too pathetic, too unprincipled, too blind to the
idealistic spirit to be capable of exhibiting anything
remotely resembling authentic hypocrisy.

In a time which views all idealism as pretentious and
arrogant folly, genuine hypocrisy shines forth as a
beacon of hope and virtue.[

From Genius Forum

How is the
matter of spiritual attainment to be adjudicated? Is the
individual in a position to make a declaration such as "I am
Enlightened", or must this judgement be made by an external
authority, and if so, how can this be done? This question is
pivotal to the whole issue of spiritual authority and what it
really means to have attained knowledge........

WolfsonJakk: I proclaim myself enlightened. (Must I pay dues
somewhere?) Also, while I am at it, I proclaim that I am the
reincarnation of Jesus...Ahh, what the hell, I AM Jesus. Do I
have more value in my words now?

David Quinn: You can claim anything you like, even enlightenment,
but it won't sound convincing (to me at least) until your words
reflect the nature of Reality.

Interestingly, the Zen system of Masters bestowing enlightenment
certificates upon others also rests on a self-proclamation of
enlightenment. It rests on the self-proclamation of the very
first Master in the series. The first Master didn't have the
benefit of someone else certifying him, which means that the
subsequent chain of certfication rests on the very same self-claim
that I make. Only it's weaker because it is based on hand-me-down
belief, and not on the direct knowledge of one's own mind.

WolfsonJakk: I completely agree with your point about the
certificate system. Give this type of system enough time and it
will absolutely become corrupt (this happened long ago, IMO).

But I also have doubts about individuals proclaiming anything
abstract about themselves. It is not open to the rigor of strict
scrutiny by others. Again, understand where I am coming from. My
initial introduction to Buddhism several years ago was in the
Dojo where personal claims by young cocky, white belts are often
met with a call to prove it; humility ensues quickly.

David Quinn: I take your point. Fortunately, the self-claim of
enlightenment is open to scrutiny, both by the self-claimer
himself and those who encounter him. The "objective"
criteria by which to assess a claim of enlightenment is wisdom
itself, the pure awareness of Reality. If that is lacking, then
no proper assessment can be made.

Again, there is not much point in having your enlightenment-claim
"tested" by an ignoramus. For the test to be valid, an
enlightened judge is needed. But in order to be sure that the
judge is actually enlightened, you would have to be enlightened
first.

So there is no getting away from it. All genuine claims of
enlightenment boil down to being self-claims. It is impossible to
escape this.

WolfsonJakk: I have met many people who claim to KNOW a way to
victory. Often these individuals are "travelers" in
that they show up for a few weeks then disappear. They live and
die by the method they know, often the latter.

David Quinn: That's true. On the other hand, longetivity isn't a
guarantee that one's wisdom and method is authentic. Look at
people like Kenneth Copeland, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa,
Rajneesh the Orange People guru, etc - these are examples of
"believers" who stayed the full distance and yet were
incredibly deluded.

WolfsonJakk: It is my opinion that we each bring to the table unique
experiences combined with particular heredity. It is true all
roads, more or less, lead to the same destination (enlightenment),
but there are many paths to there with many waypoints along the
way. One should begin with where one is now rather than "start
with the ideal and work your backward" as Vijay so
eloquently put it.

David Quinn: That's a nice belief, but it doesn't really mean
anthing. If a person isn't fully committed to the path of reason
and whole-heartedly dedicated to the pursuit of ultimate
understanding, then he won't attain enlightenment. It's as simple
as that. Compared to this grand endeavour, the "many roads"
of which you speak are like little scrawlings made by ants.

WolfsonJakk: If I were to train for Olympic weightlifting
competition, perhaps the second worst training method (other than
no work at all) would be to begin training with weights that will
win a gold medal. It guarantees injury and frustration.

David Quinn: That's certainly good advice. When it comes to the
spiritual path, one cannot suddenly live a life of non-attachment
and awareness of Reality, just like that. One needs to slowly
work one's way towards it, beginning with the path of reason.
That is, the brain needs to be put onto gear and the great truths
of life need to be uncovered. Otherwise, nothing of significance
will happen, no matter how much effort you put into your
spiritual practice.[

Note:
Images and story titles appearing in this feature are not
necessarily part of the original news items.

-
Sinners Preaching to the Priests -

The
Sunday Mailby ANDREW BOLT December 23, 2001

PETER
Hollingworth should resign as the Australian Governor-General.
His poor excuses for his inadequate reaction to
allegations  later accepted in court  of
pedophilia at the Anglican Church's Toowoomba Preparatory
School, while he was Archbishop of Brisbane, is deeply
disturbing.

It raises doubt about his willingness to fight for a
principle  to do the right thing, rather than the
convenient thing.

In 1987, Kevin John Guy, 36, was hired by the Anglican
Toowoomba Preparatory School to be its senior boarding
master. Principal Robert Brewster later admitted he knew
he should have hired a married couple, but the school
didn't have a house to offer them.

That wasn't his only
miscalculation. Early in 1990, a school council member
saw Guy kissing a student and told Brewster, who took no
action after Guy denied it.

Just after Anzac Day, Guy sat
next to a 12-year-old girl, let's call her A, during a
video night and fondled her breasts.

He warned her not to tell
anyone because she wouldn't be believed. Over the ensuing
months he sexually assaulted her about 30 times for up to
seven hours a night.

Weeks later, another student told
her mother Guy had rubbed her inner thigh. The mother complained
to Brewster, who replied her daughter had a "very vivid
imagination". Then, on the night of November 9, the house
mistress discovered A at 10.30pm with Guy in the Year 7 common
room with the lights off. This time Guy said he was simply
comforting the girl, and yet again Brewster believed him.

But the distraught girl had
already written to her family pleading to be taken from the
school. Her mother rushed to Toowoomba, and found her little girl
crying.

But it was only three days later,
on November 13, when another girl accused Guy of sexually abusing
her, that Brewster says he finally realised the teacher was a
pedophile. Even then, Brewster told staff this second girl was
"the type of girl who makes up stories to get attention".
But the police were called and, on November 30, Guy was charged.
Hollingworth said it was on this date, three days after he
attended the school's speech day, that he first heard the
allegations.

Given that, it may be hard to
criticise him for the way the school had reacted until then, even
though it was his responsibility to hire the principal and
appoint the school council. But it is harder to excuse him for
what followed. For a start, the council decided to say nothing to
parents about the crime, hoping, it seems, to avoid a scandal and
to defend compensation claims. A recent statement from the
Anglican diocese admits the council decided on legal advice to
"say nothing publicly" but says it tried to protect the
students and their families "from publicity and further
anguish". Many parents don't believe that. Not when the
minutes of a school council special meeting records the school's
solicitor advising it not to pay the counselling costs of the two
abused children because "it would not be of benefit to the
school".

The evidence indicates the school
was interested in a disgraceful cover-up, something Hollingworth
denies. Guy, when he was charged, offered to resign, but the
council said no. Rather than fight the charges, Guy gassed
himself in his car on December 18, leaving a suicide note listing
20 girls at the school  including A  whom he said he
loved, as well as others at a school at Mittagong in NSW, where
he'd previously taught. Brewster said the note would have been
given to the diocese, then headed by Hollingworth, who is yet to
confirm or deny that. But the administrator of the Mittagong
school last week said the Anglican Church had never informed it
of the note's contents.
Nor were the Toowoomba parents made much wiser. They received a
letter from Brewster telling them of Guy's "tragic death",
but not of the allegations against him. Indeed, Brewster said Guy
had been "the best thing to happen to the school since
sliced bread".

The school nurse was so outraged
that on Christmas Day, she wrote to Hollingworth saying the
parents and students were being deceived. Three weeks later,
parents also wrote to Hollingworth saying the school community
should have been told of the events behind Guy's death. They also
wrote to the local bishop, demanding Brewster resign over this
"massive cover-up". It was then that A's psychologist,
Joy Conolly, rang Hollingworth, begging him to help the girl's
distressed parents.
His choice? He told Conolly, according to her evidence to the
Supreme Court, that he was "very tired and needed a holiday
and there was nothing he could do". Hollingworth has
rejected "any suggestion that I voiced a lack of concern or
disinterest in the welfare of the families" to Conolly. And
he lamely adds he made "several unsuccessful attempts to
contact one of the parents by telephone".

Hollingworth does admit his response today would be "different"
but without saying how. But he maintains he was distant from the
running of the school and legal advice convinced him it was
"imperative that insurance coverage not be jeopardised".
That defence looks highly suspect. For instance, in 1991
Hollingworth wrote to parents of the victims, assuring them he
was monitoring the situation closely. The legal advice to him to
admit nothing and say little to the parents was wrong in the
deepest sense. If you believe in higher values  like
honesty, honour, candour, repentance and our duty to defend the
weak, just as Christ did  then such advice looks sick and
weaselly.

Comment:Whilst the Anglican Church has always
been rather secular in nature, it is almost inconceiveable that
is had descended to this level of spiritual redundancy. Nowadays
we have the money lenders preaching to the clergy. Jesus would no
doubt be horrified. The question is how does a religious
organisation that holds itself up to be a moral guardian and
shephard to society, indeed, even the voice of God in the world,
hope to maintain any credibility whatever when it runs to secular
institutions for advise on how to proceed in matters that are
explicitly moral in character? Surely they cannot have any such
hope.

-
Officials urge Detroiters to celebrate new year without guns -

ASSOCIATED
PRESS

Friday, December 28, 2001

Detroit city officials today kicked off their "Ring in the
New Year With a Bell, Not a Bang" campaign to prevent deaths
and injuries from New Year's Eve gunfire.

Officials and representatives from White Castle restaurants
encouraged Detroiters to ring bells at midnight Monday, instead
of shooting off guns as the have in years past.

The Rev. Nicholas Hood III, a city councilman, said White
Castle's 12 Detroit locations would give out miniature bells.

Speaking at one of the restaurants Friday, Hood said the campaign
is not only an effort to prevent unnecessary deaths from stray
bullets but also an effort to encourage the rebuilding of the
city.

"I believe this campaign works," he said. "Every
year since this started, the number of shots between the hours of
12 and 2 have declined. I believe that this campaign represents a
human dimension to the bricks and mortar that are rebuilding this
city."

Hood stressed that firing guns to celebrate the New Year is not
something that only happens in Detroit. Deaths due to stray
bullets have also happened in cities such as Chicago and New
Orleans in recent years.

The New Year's Eve revelry has been a tradition since the 19th
century, when farmers used to shoot off their guns to celebrate.

Comment:What can one say to that? I guess it gives a
whole new dimension to the term "friendly fire". But it
is extraordinary the risks we're prepared to impose on others all
for the sake of a bit of frivolous pleasure.

-
Burning Yule Log Wins Christmas TV Ratings in NY -

Friday December 28 10:35 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Show them nothing and they
will watch: A television program showing only a yule log burning
in a fireplace -- accompanied by a soundtrack of seasonal songs
-- was the highest rated morning show in New York City on
Christmas Day, the Nielsen television ratings service said on
this week.

Titled simply "Yule Log," the show attracted about 611,000
viewers to WPIX Chanel 11 as it toasted the competition to finish
No. 1 for the time period from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., Nielsen said.
The closest competitor was WABC Channel 7's ``Good Morning
America,'' which attracted about 532,000 viewers.

Betty Ellen Berlamino, general manager of WPIX, which is owned by
the Tribune Co., said the two-hour yule log program was a
remastered version of a WPIX staple from 1966 to 1989.

"Every year we get so many requests from people to bring
back the yule log," Berlamino said Thursday. "People
are looking for tradition. They're clinging to tradition this
year. We thought this would be the ultimate in comfort television.
... The fire kept you extra warm this year."

She said the program received a warm response from viewers, many
of whom called to thank the station for its hearty helping of
Christmas cheer. But will the log be back for an encore flare-up
in 2002?

Comment: This is a perfect example of the kind of escape
from reality people indulge in over the Xmas period. It is
expressive of a tremendous desire to escape from the trials and
pressures of everyday life. One could defend this on the basis of
it being a necessary release of pressure that builds up in people
through the year, however, none of these escapist periods consist
of an attempt to stop and consider the true nature of those
everyday pressures. It is just a wallowing in harmlessness and
vacuity. It is merely a movement from one state of such vacuity
to an even more active one, in the same way that the fool
experiences foolish dreams each time his head hits the pillow at
night.

And speaking of the pressures of
everyday life:

- Job
Woes Cause Adults to Wet Beds -

Friday December 21 10:15 AM ET

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Over 60,000 adults in Hong Kong wet their
beds and a quarter of them bed-wet every night mainly because of
work problems, a survey showed Friday.

While the sufferers made up only 2.4 percent of adults aged
between 16 and 40, the survey found that more than half of them
wet their beds three or more nights a week.

The survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong of 8,500 people
showed that sufferers were most likely to wet their beds when
choosing a job and or when they were worried about work
performance.

Most also did not have tertiary education, it found.

"Very few people knew how to manage the problem, and less
than half of the affected individuals have tried some form of
therapy or sought medical assistance," the survey said.

Hong Kong is facing its second recession in four years and many
face the prospect of job cuts or being laid off.

Comment: Perhaps may of them will find
jobs in factories that manufacture mattress protectors, but this
story is just too sad and pathetic to really be funny. It is
symbolic of the madness and suffering inflicted upon societies as
a result of material and herd values. It would be interesting to
see what results would accrue should similar research be
conducted in western countries like the US where notions of
"success" are the heart and soul of the nation's drive.
Despite the obvious puns that leap to one's mind, this is no
piddling matter. These are the sorts of stresses that cause
workers to walk into their workplace and gun down dozens of
people with automatic weapons. Amazingly, there is little
evidence that a change of mentality is on the horizon. We seem
content to slowly destroy ourselves.

- Suspended Priest
'Does Not Believe in Xmas' -

Monday December 24 10:56 AM ET
By Alex Richardson

DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish Protestant minister who does not
believe in Christmas or that Jesus was the Son of God has been
suspended from his post for three months to "reflect on his
statements."

Andrew Furlong, Dean of Clonmacnoise and Rector of Trim in County
Meath, startled worshippers in his quiet Irish midlands parish
when his unconventional views on traditional Christian teachings
were aired in articles published on his Web site.

"I don't believe the traditional understanding of Christmas,
that God took human form and was born as a babe in Bethlehem,"
he told Reuters on Monday.

Furlong, 54, who was ordained in the Anglican Church of Ireland
in the early 1970s, said he has held his unorthodox beliefs for
more than 30 years but had not shared them previously with his
parishioners.

"With the deepest respect for others and their beliefs, to
my mind Jesus, and John the Baptist also, were mistaken and
misguided 'end time' prophets," he wrote in one article.

"Jesus was neither a mediator nor a savior, neither
superhuman nor divine. We need to leave him to his place in
history and move on."

Furlong believes a modern church needs to allow a diverse spread
of views and allow members to challenge traditional teachings.

"Over the years the church has changed its view on many
things -- slavery, divorce, birth control, the Latin mass,"
he said.

But his views have gone down badly with the Bishop of Meath and
Kildare, Richard Clarke, who has ordered the priest to take a
three-month leave of absence to "facilitate a period of
quiet reflection during which he may reflect on his statements."

"My position is pretty uncertain. I am suspended and I may
find at the end of the three months I will not have my license
renewed," said Furlong, who for the time being continues to
live in the rectory in Trim, around 25 miles (40 km) northwest of
Dublin, and draw his salary from the Church of Ireland.

Comment: The most extrordinary thing about this story is
that this fellow has held these ideas for 30 years and said
nothing, choosing instead, apparantly, to go on offering
teachings and propagating attitudes he regards as false or
anachronistic. Although he may seem more liberal and modern than
his peers, if I were one of his superiors I think I would suspend
him just for his cowardice and dishonesty. [

From Genius Forum

It is
inevtiable that any spiritual or philosophic aspirant will exist
in state of conflict between the nature of their ideals and the
practical reality of their everyday, worldly lives. They are not
yet enlightened and so still possess ego and attachments. This
conflict is part and parcel of the path to wisdom and cannot be
avoided. The real problem arises when we seek to disavow the
existence of such a conflict: instead of acknowledging our
follies and weaknesses and imperfections for what they are, we
try to deny them and claim that they are quite consistent with a
life spent in earnest pursuit of Truth. Thus, the path to wisdom
is lost to us and becomes indistinguishable from the complexity
of our worldly desires and needs..........

Dan Rowden: It's always interesting to witness the
dynamic that is created by a person who exists in a state of
conflict between their worldly attachments and their higher
ideals - to the degree that they possess such a thing. On the one
hand they are egotistically attached to things like their wife
and kids, their careers and reputation, their worldly possessions
and security etc, and on the other hand some part of their ego
perceives and suffers over the obvious egotism and mediocrity of
it all. Thus, such a person lives a kind of duplicitous life
where each aspect of their egos competes with the other for
control and dominance.

These competing forces are constantly aware of the other and are
at all times ready to make their own case and defend against a
perceived threat. So, when such a person swings toward their
idealistic side, the worldly side immediately seeks to impose
itself and deal with the threat to itself by either extolling the
virtues of that wordly existence, creating guilt in the
individual, or by denying the very substance of the ideal itself.
This results in the person proclaiming the virues of one realm,
in one minute, and the other realm in the next, making a sham of
reason in the process. It is by no means an enviable condition.

And when I describe this as a state of "conflict", I
mean that in a purely logical way - that is, to indicate two
competing but incompatible forces and states. It doesn't mean
that the individual necessarily experiences real emotional
conflict with respect to it. It's entirely possible for a person
to switch from one compartment of their minds to another with no
real logical connection between the two and without experiencing
a twinge of conscience regarding it. The truth and virtue of what
one feels in any given moment is paramount.

It's easy for a person to get stuck in this realm of existence
for a very long time because neither aspect of their ego is
sufficiently developed to take that person more authentically in
one direction than the other; they basically spend their whole
time in a state of vacillation between the wordly and mediocre
and the ideal and lofty. Should a person actually expereince deep
emotional conflict over this scenario, then scope for development
exists. Most, however, never get beyond the suffering which is
really just an egotistical insecurity that can usually be dealt
with more than adequately by little more than a flurry of words
and sentiment.

The role of a genuine teacher in all of this is that of bringing
the nature of that conflict to the forefront of the mind of the
one who exhibits it, keeping that mind as focussed as possible on
the true nature of the realm of the ideal, thus helping to ripen
their karma - one way or another. This process invariably
increases the suffering of the individual who is already in some
turmoil, but it is the pain of birth - birth into the human realm.
They are the productive growing pains of the spirit.

David Hodges: I have certainly been in a state of
conflict about exactly this, with no feeling of moving towards
any sort of resolution other than giving up and resigning myself
to the conflict.

At one point, I was about to get rid of as much stuff as possible
and try to live simply. That never happened. I am not a monk.
Part of the reason is that, when it comes down to it, I really
like my stuff. I don't want to live without it. I really
enjoy my motorcycles and my car and my basses and guitars. I like
having them around; I like how they feel, and look, and sound.
They are well-made, beautiful objects and I appreciate them. At
times I even enjoy my career, which pays for these lovely objects
that surround me.

Dan Rowden: Well, there's your answer right there.
You haven't yet reached a point where either dissatisfaction
with, or repulsion to, worldly pleasures and attachments has
given you real impetus to pursue more lofty philosophic
aspirations, even if you are able to recognise their reality.
That's fair enough. It would be foolish to contrive anything here.
It's just a simple fact of life that if one has not developed a
healthy disgust for the world and onself and their egotistical
natures, then there's basically no chance whatever of an
authentic pursuit of wisdom occuring.

David Hodges: While I see wisdom and knowledge as an
important goal in life, I don't see it as the only goal.
To be wise, yet be miserable, would not be a good life. Happiness
is an important goal.

Dan Rowden: Two things: 1) happiness is deluded
nonsense; 2) one cannot be wise and miserable - the two are
antithetical notions. Unhappiness exists where one desires
happiness. That's how unhappiness arises. The wise person is
beyond all that kind of thing because he is beyond the forces of
such egotistical desire. The real question is what is happiness
and what does it mean to have it? If one attains happiness by
egotistical means, how is it that one retains it? Happiness is
ephemeral because as soon as one has it, one begins to fear
losing it, and in doing so one does indeed lose it.

David Hodges: My stuff does make me happy. This is
not mere contentment or a sense of security. I have a great time,
blasting down the road, slamming through the gears, blasting the
stereo. It's fun. I am happy doing it.

Dan Rowden: "My perversions make me happy".
"I have a great time beating women and shoving my dick in 5
year old girls. It's fun. I am happy doing it."

David Hodges: But if that's what makes me happy -
well - what's wrong with being happy? Isn't that what everyone is
looking for, in the end? Don't you seek wisdom out of the idea
that wisdom, being wise, will make you happy? Can you honestly
say you'd rather be wise, and miserable?

Dan Rowden: I would much rather seek wisdom and be
comparitively miserable in the process than be a merry fool. It's
a matter of conscience. And whilst I agree all purpose and values
arise out of a need to fulfill egotistical desires, it doesn't
follow that because two babes come from the same womb that the
one who becomes a lascivous pornographer is of the same value as
the one who becomes a sage. It doesn't matter from the point of
view of Nature, of course, but we function on the basis of a
discriminative consciousness and thus things always matter to us.
If your current disposition leans toward worldly pleasure, and
you're aware of that fact, then that is something, but there are
yet things that you are not aware of and that is the crux of the
problem.

David Hodges: I was living with a woman, and I booted
her out, with a sense of great relief, and much looking forward
to being alone. Within a few weeks, there was another woman there
to take her place, far more womanly that the first; more
feminine, much less intellectual.

Dan Rowden: That makes sense, really. Clearly for a
while there your ego was pretty dissatisfied with the wordly
aspects of your life and so you indulged in a bit of an excursion
into the philosophic realm to a greater degree than you have,
perhaps, done previously. But the key here is that the
disatisfaction was really only to do with specific elements of
that wordly existence and not the worldly life, per se. Given
that, it was and is unlikely that the fairly extereme demands of
an authenic philosophic existence will appeal to you, at least
not until such time, if ever, that the "world" has
nothing to offer you at all.

What is the attraction to a more feminine, less intellectual
woman? An escape from your own mind? What does it take in terms
of one's behaviour and the integrity of that to hold onto such a
woman? To please her? Seems like a lot of hard work and bullshit
to me.

David Hodges: I don't know about denying ideals, but
I can not deny that I am a man. Men must live in some relation to
women. To shut them out completely is not the solution.

Dan Rowden: Certainly men must live in relation to
women. That's how the world is, but that doesn't mean embracing
the feminine, encouraging and nurturing it and thereby cementing
unconsciousness into the fabric of the world. One cannot be doing
that sort of thing and hope to be taken seriously when claiming
to have not abandoned or to be in any way still working toward
loftier ideals. It's better to just be honest and say that such
ideals simply don't occupy a signficant place in one's values.

David Hodges: Well, I don't feel there should be any
conflict between "worldly" and "lofty". We
are here, in this world, of this world, and we need to live in it
as authentically as we can. Is not living, fully and
authentically, a lofty goal?

Dan Rowden: Yes, indeed, we are here in the world
and have to operate within it. That is undenibaly true, but there
is a world of difference between acknowledging the practical fact
of our worldly existence and entering into the spirit of the
worldly mentality. It boils down to the choice betwen living in
the world deludedly or wisely. That choice stands before all of
us. It is stark and uncompromising. We want to have our cake and
eat it too, but I'm afraid that just isn't possible. What happens
is that we glory in our egototistical pleasures, ignoring all of
the consequences of that, whilst casting an occasional eye to the
idealistic dimension of life and satisfying ourselves that we are
yet involved with it. We experience the nobility of it
vicariously, like the token Buddhist who has a Buddha idol on
their mantle and every time they look at it they feel as if they
are following the Dharma. They then walk out the front door and
live a life that is essentially no different from those who have
never even heard of the Buddha.

I have no problem at all with people living honestly, and if that
means living a mediocre, egotistical life with common worldly
values, then so be it. Unfortunately, it is incredibly rare to
find a person who doesn't justify that state of affairs by
misrepresenting both the nature of what they're doing and the
nature of the alternarive idealistic life. That I will always
battle.

David Hodges: How can we turn away from the pleasures
and sensations of a fine wine, a good dinner, a beautiful woman,
and pretend they mean nothing? Can you lead an ascetic life, and
really be happy? Isn't that turning your back on life?

Dan Rowden: I don't lead an ascetic life and do not
advocate such a thing. How can I turn away from the things you
mention? Well, what if they no longer bring me pleasure? More
importantly, what if I no longer possess the elements of ego via
which I would need or desire such things in the first place? The
real question is not how one can turn away from such things, but
why one needs them in the first place.

David Hodges: There is what is true - and
that's important. But there is also what is good - and
that is more important. Truth is just a starting point. First you
must know the truth of the matter, than you can judge what is
good, what is bad, what is right.

Dan Rowden: Exactly, you must know the truth of the
matter, but that entails wisdom. Therefore, the pursuit of wisdom
is paramount. That ought be the great ethical impertaive of human
existence, don't you think?

Yamori: Very interesting indeed.... I too seem
to have a similar problem with two "masters" of thought...

My egotistical and "true nature" side screams for me to
go by Satanic philosophy (not a satan worshiper, a satanist,
theres a difference, read it up! while my more idealistic side
screams for me to be a socialist-anarchist type person... luckily
these philosophies have similar structure so I have been able to
pursue some wisdom either way.

WolfsonJakk: The bottom line is this: what relative
amount of suffering is a part of your life. Buddhism is a
philosophy that addresses this issue directly without reliance on
emotional crutches or leaps of faith. It defines the root of
suffering.

Dan Rowden: Indeed, and it defines suffering as
ignorance. To truly understand this point is to enter into a mode
where one suffers for one's ignorance, as such. This is
imperative, for without this form of suffering, an authentic
pursuit of wisdom is unlikely. When ignorance regarding the
nature of Reality itself, causes one to suffer, one is on the way.

WolfsonJakk: We all suffer, emotionally and
physically.

Dan Rowden: That's an assumption on your part. It
is not a certain thing that everyone suffers emotionally.

WolfsonJakk: What method entails alleviation of the
most amount of suffering?

Dan Rowden: Suicide?

WolfsonJakk: Should one neglect all wordly
attachments, desires, and ego to achieve a kind of static state?
One would not suffer in this case, it is assumed. But why would
one want to live?

Dan Rowden: This "why would one want to live"
is itself a question posed by the ego. It expresses an
egotistical attachment to particular modes of living. It is,
therefore, rather meaningless. More particularly, it fails to
address the question of what life is and whether there is any
fundamental difference between life and death in the first place.
Which reminds me of a story about Diogenes that I have oft'
quoted (or paraphrased, which is what I'm about to do).....

Someone once said to Diogenes, "What is the difference
between life and death?" To which he replied, "There is
no difference." The questioner then asked: "So then,
why do you live?" "Because there is no difference",
Diogenes replied.

WolfsonJakk: It would be a struggle to attain this
state and to maintain it, and for what? The carrot in this
scenario is a description of a transcendent, blissful state. But
this psychological/emotional condition can be achieved without
the need to be hermit.

Dan Rowden: I don't advocate being hermitic or not
being hermitic. Being a hermit is usually just as much an
expression of attachment as anything else. And you say it would
be a struggle to attain enlightenment? So what? Anything less
than that for the one who has attained the human realm and
suffers for the fact of his ignorance will not suffice because
anything less than the Truth cannot remove his suffering.

WolfsonJakk: To decide one thing is better than
another is a form of violence and suffering.

Dan Rowden: So, you've decided that not deciding is
better than deciding. You violent thug!!

WolsonJakk: To say I am right and you are wrong is
the product of a mind with ego and subject to suffering.

Dan Rowden: Or a mind subject to Truth and
expressing compassion.

WolfsonJakk: To live in a cave and experience the
cycle of life and death outside is to experience suffering. The
entity without needs is an entity that is unnatural. There has
never been a life form on this planet that fits this description.
Why would some intelligent minds strive for it?

Dan Rowden: It depends on what you mean by "needs".
I have needs in that I need food and shelter and many other
practical accoutrements to pursue my purpose, but these are not
needs bound up in the delusion of the ego and therefore no
suffering accompanies them.

WolfsonJakk: It seems the only solution is to learn
the skill of dealing with this truth. The "static state"
is a place I feel I can, and daily do, reach through meditation
and thought (though some may argue I am only in delusion), but it
is not a permanent state. I mix this with the attitude of a thief.
I steal pleasure. I smile at my daughter as she grows, at making
the people at work happy when a project is completed, etc. I
understand pleasure brings pain. I understand I am dancing with
death. But we all are, whether I work or live in a cave.

With the attitude of the thief, I can practice the control of my
thoughts and yet come out ahead in the end. With skill and
practice, it is no longer a zero-sum game. I steal small
momentary pleasures then revert back to a calm, disengaged state.
It has increasingly worked well for me for a few years now.

Dan Rowden: This is the language of the defeatest -
the one who refuses to give up the comfort of the warm bed for
the icy winds of the high hills of philosophic ideals, which is
the proper place for anyone with genuine aspirations for the
attainment of wisdom.

I imagine you're expecting to live to be 500 or so.

This calm state is just a contrived meditative technique you've
learned over the years. The fact that you just slip back into the
world of ego pleasure at will shows that you haven't
authentically transcended the ego to any real degree at all. If
you had, you would be entirely unable to play the theif as you do.

WolfsonJakk: What are the flaws in this life
attitude?

Dan Rowden: They don't represent a genuine
departure from ignorance.

Victor Danilchenko: The thesis underlying this whole thread
is ridiculous. It's automatically assumed that there is an
inherent conflict between one's everyday life, and the "higher
ideal"; it is assumed that there is an irreconcilable
dichotomy between the 'sacred' and the 'profane' -- a view
popularized by xianity in occidental cultures.

Of course, this dichotomy does exist -- if your "higher
ideals" are explicitly separated from the world. This is the
case in xianity, and this is the case in drowden's "ultimate
truth" lunacy.

David Quinn: The conflict that Dan speaks of is
essentially a conflict between the striving for perfect honesty
and the compromises one makes in order to lead an enjoyable,
conflict-free life. The issue turns on how deeply and how
perfectly one wishes to be honest. The moment you strive for
perfection in this area, you are immediateley place yourself at
odds with our society which routinely accepts dishonesty as a
matter of course.

If a person is unable to perceive and appreciate the conflict,
then it means that his striving for honesty isn't very far-reaching
or genuine. [

Author of "The
Human Evasion" and "Advice to Clever Children"

The
question is whether anyone has ever been, in any serious
way, not sane. I have examined the history of
the human race with care. Kant gives the
impression that he liked the inconceiveable, but his
books were too long; Einstein was interested in the
Universe, but was bad at psychology; H.G Wells saw
that research consisted of taking risks, but declined
into sociology. My best candidates, therefore, are
Nietzsche and Christ. It may be objected that their
ideas cannot possibly be of interest, since one went mad
and the other was crucified. However, I
think we should not hold this against them: they may have
felt a trifle isolated.

"Love
thy neighbour as thyself": In fact, everyone does
love their neighbour as themselves.
They desire that he shall accept second-best as they have
done; that he, too, shall be made to realize his
limitations and "come to terms with himself".

The human race is so
meglomaniac; they think you're being conceited if you say
you're better than everybody else.

A human
relationship is what happens when you know you can rely
on the other person to be as dishonest as you are.

The human race's favourite method for
being in control of the facts is to ignore them.

One of the
greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it
has none.

Science arose by accident in the brief
space when one great orthodoxy was loosening its hold and
the new great orthodoxy had not yet reached its full
strength. The first orthodoxy was that
of religion which dominated the dark ages.
The second orthodoxy is that of the belief in society,
which is dominating the dark ages now beginning.

Earning a
living is regarded as moral. This is because a
person who is answerable only to himself may or may not
be wasting his time; an employed person is certain to be.

Job satisfaction consists of knowing
that you are not actually doing anything to increase
anyone else's freedom.

Women are
the last people to be trusted with children. Those
who repress their own aspirations will scarcely be
tolerant of the aspirations of others.

Marriage: there are less painful ways of
committing suicide.

Men are
children at heart and women are not. Women abandon
themselves to society.

Women are like "sane" people
in general - you can't imagine how they can bear to be
like it, but the last thing they want is to be told how
to stop.

Only the
impossible is worth attempting. One is sure to fail
at anything else.

The object of modern science is to make
all aspects of reality equally boring, so that no one
will be tempted to think about them.

If you stand
up to the human race, you lose something called their
"goodwill"; if you kowtow to them, you gain
...... their permission to continue kowtowing.

Society expresses its sympathy for the
geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact
that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the
geniuses of the present.

Equality: It
is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to
make them appear equally clever.

Democracy: Everyone should have an equal
opportunity to obstruct everybody else.

I cannot
write long books; I leave that for those people who have
nothing to say.

Humility means (to the human race)
to desire what you can easily have.

Society,
they say, exists to safe-guard the rights of the
individual. If this is so, the primary right
of a human being is evidently to live unrealistically.

Do the
final steps towards Enlightenment involve a classical "leap
of faith"? Does
one leave reason behind in taking the leap into the abyss of the
Infinite? Or does one fulfill
the promise of that reason by doing so? Is any action based in
reason or a direct consequence of it, not, itself, entirely
reasonable?

Bondi: One has to leave behind everything,
including reason, to contemplate and realise the truth.

David Quinn: If you leave reason behind, then how do
you know that what you are realizing is the truth?

Bondi: In a word: as I conceive it, "super-rationalism"
is a better phrasing than "extreme-rationalism". (Because
the former suggests something that has transcended reason; while
the latter suggests something that has pushed reason to an
ultimate state among its natural barriers, to a little window for
the whole world outside.)

David Quinn: I suppose the Truth could be called
"super-rational" in a sense - but really, it is no more
super-rational than is the colour red, or the sound of a flute,
or indeed any experience at all. None of our experiences of the
world is capturable by our concepts, words or logic, and the
experience of Truth is no different. But then, that is not the
function of these things.

The use of concepts and logic is akin to using a map. One needs a
map to find the Grand Canyon, say, but it isn't the map's job to
capture the essence and experience of the Grand Canyon itself.
Once you reach your destination, you put the map aside and simply
use your eyes and ears.

The path to Truth is no different. Reason takes you to the
threshold, and reason also tells you how to cross the threshold,
and only then do you put reason aside, cross the threshold, and
experience the Truth directly.

Bondi: Yes - with not leaving reason, it is
like glancing at the sea from its shores but not going into the
waters.

Sapius: Yes, reason takes you to that
threshold, and beyond, but then you Realize that there is no
"threshold" at all, which divides "real" from
"illusion". ...And "YOU" do not put 'reason'
aside as such, for there remains no more an "I" then,
and thereby "reason" has no more inherent meaning for
you either, and Everything becomes Real again. This Experience
cannot be explained.

WolfsonJakk: Does this not sound like a leap of
faith, David? Substitute a word for another here or there, and
you have an evangelical Christian.

David Quinn: It's only a leap of faith in the sense
that you are not sure whether or not it is desirable to give
yourself over to Truth. Giving yourself over to Truth is scary,
because, from an egotistical point of view, entering into Truth
is like entering into death. One needs to have the faith that a
Truth-filled existence is a worthy form of existence, and one
that can be endured.

As Kierkegaard once said: "To have faith is really to
advance along the way where all human road signs point: back,
back, back."

So genuine faith in Truth is completely unlike the "faith"
possessed by a Christian. Christian faith is essentially an
exercise in blind belief, wherein in the Christian believes in
something that can't be backed by reason. True spiritual faith,
by contrast, is an exercise in courage, wherein the spiritual
person decides, against all "common sense", to follow,
to the very end, what reason tells him is true.

As for myself, here is what one
man told me: "The trouble with you is that you make
men think. Men don't want to think."

It is swell if a woman is good at
math or good at being a lawyer or doctor or has knowledge of
science or history or business. What is not wanted is
intensely focused intelligence -- what I might call philosophical
compassion -- that is equal to or that surpasses his own.
That is not comforting but discomforting. It can be
alarming and threatening.

Most heterosexual men do not want
to make love to a woman of such intense hardness. Even
those who may initially find it to be attractive will back off.

This is prudent. They should
back off. It is emasculating. They would do better to
seek out the companionship of a more willing and more submissive
woman; a romantic; a woman who wants children.

I think this is why, in part,
older men are often coupled with much younger women.
Younger women are still listening to the so called biological
clock and that makes them more submissive than older women.
Marsha Faizi

Weininger attacked
mostly by women after the publication of his book. If he had
wrote such an excellent work on the question of the sexes, women
would not even understand what the hell he was writing about... Bondi

That is simply not so. I get "attacked" all the
time by women/feminists for the things I say but barely a single
one of them has ever understood my words. It doesn't
need understanding. It is sufficient that one is perceived
as being negative towards women or femininity. That in
itself is more than enough to warrant an attack upon one's
person, either by women or men. An actual understanding of
what is being said is pretty irrelevant. What matters is
that one immediately moves to protect one of the greatest
emotional attachments society has - Woman.

You get the same kind of thing, but with a bit
less vitriol, when you critically examine love or the emotions
generally. No-one really cares about the spcifics of your
critique; all they care about is that you have the gall to
examine that which is apparently held to be sacrosanct.Dan Rowden

The very idea of a woman underpinning her
beliefs with reasons is pretty meaningless, when you think about
it. After all, women don't actually have beliefs.
Rather, they become wholly aborbed into a particular point of
view in the moment, and then, when the moment passes, they become
wholly absorbed into another point of view, and so on ad
infinitum. They have no consciousness of the
relationship between successive points of view and thus no
consciousness of whether the two conflict or not.
To them, the moment is everything, their entire universe.
As such, it is nigh on impossible for them to find the
underpinnings for what they "believe" in because, by
the time they come up with some plausible candidates, the point
of view in question has long vanished from their minds.
They have essentially forgotten what they were trying to underpin.

Woman's reasonings are regurgitations of what
she has heard or read. Because she doesn't think,
her reasonings tend to lack substance and quickly peter out.
When she does sound convincing in her reasonings it is because (a)
her source material was impeccable to begin with and (b) her
absorption into the point of view which houses these reasonings
is so complete, she ends up sounding completely confident. David Quinn

I think it's particularly easy to tell if a
woman is flirting. The criteria being: She is alive.
She is conscious. She is interacting with a male. If these
criteria are met then the woman is almost certainly flirting (where
"flirting" is defined as a woman using her sexuality to
exercise inflence over a male). Dan Rowden

Genuinely intelligent people (or either sex) do
not have successful relationships because they are unable to turn
a blind eye to the true nature of love and relationship. To
be successful in such things one must bury certain aspects of
one's intelligence under the soil of emotional desire and ego.
Intelligence cannot thrive and grow in such a medium because it
lacks the kind of nutrients that genuine intelligence requires.Dan Rowden

Disclaimer:
editorial opinions expressed in this publication are
those of its authors and do not, necessarily, reflect the
views of subscribers to Genius-L or Genius Forum. Dialogues adapted from Genius-L and Genius
Forum have been edited for the purpose of brevity and clarity.
Certain spelling mistakes and typographical errors have been corrected
to preserve meaning.